For Ester Sherlock and her dog, going out for a walk can be a matter of life or death.

A paramedic on the hazardous area response team, Ester is never really off duty because she and her canine companion, Izzy are on call for the Search And Rescue Dogs Association (SARDA) and North East Wales Search and Rescue (NEWSAR).

The dynamic duo can be deployed anywhere across North Wales - and sometimes further afield - to help find people who are missing or lost.

Just recently, Ester’s six-year-old blue merle border collie found a woman crouching in bushes to keep warm in sub zero temperatures and likely wouldn’t have survived the night.

Ester said: “I started bodying up in Scotland for the search dog teams there and when I moved to North Wales, I decided to get my own dog and train them.

“I’ve had Izzy since she was a puppy so started training her very early on for open area searching.

“In SARDA, we train each other, so we’ve got experienced handlers who help us train our young dogs and then we are monitored by internal and external assessors.

Ester Sherlock and her dog Izzy are part of the Search and Rescue Dog Association (Image: Ian Cooper/Daily Post)

“Izzy is trained to look for any human scent so we start by getting someone to run off with her toy and she has to find it.

“That distance gets further and further until she eventually uses her nose and learns that when she finds a human scent, her toy is going to be there.

“Once she does that, it gets more difficult to the point where she’s actually having to search big open areas for human scent.”

Five years on, and Izzy now has all the obedience and training qualifications to make her a formidable four-legged friend to SARDA training coordinator and search dog handler, Ester.

She even has coloured tags on her collar to show her acheivements.

Ester, who lives in Denbigh with husband and fellow volunteer, Tim and their four dogs - said two of them, including Izzy are working dogs.

She explained: “Tim’s dog is very different - she is a trailing dog and she will find only one specific scent, so we find an article of the missing person’s clothing or take a swab from inside their car so their scent is on that swab.

“We give that to the dog and and then the dog will only follow that specific scent.

“Both dogs are capable of trailing and open area searching.”

Izzy got her first find recently when she discovered a woman cowering in some bushes (Image: Ian Cooper/Daily Post)

Call-outs can happen at any time, whatever the weather and volunteers have to be fully prepared and kitted out.

Ester said: “What happens is we get a text message from the police telling us there’s someone missing in the area.

“That will go to one of our coordinators who will have a chat with the police and the local mountain rescue team, decide which dogs are suitable for the job and then we’ll get another text message asking if we can meet with the team and the police and police search advisor before we get allocated an area to go and search.

“We keep our kit and equipment in our van so that we’re ready to go.”

Ester added: “Just recently, Izzy got her first find when we were out looking for a missing woman.

“We’d been allocated an area of woodland and had been searching for a few hours, it was 2am before we got to her and it was absolutely freezing that night.

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“She was curled up underneath some bushes, she was very cold, I’m not sure she would’ve survived the night, so it was a really good find.

“It makes all the training worthwhile.”

Ester is on call 24/7 and volunteers her time around her day job as a paramedic for the hazardous area response team, which deals with major incidents such as terror attacks like the Manchester bombing, chemical incidents or massive road traffic accidents.

“We’re there to deal with anything out of the ordinary, things that the normal ambulance service can’t cope with, and obviously my medical background helps with my volunteer work,” she said.

“SARDA predominantly covers the whole of North Wales.

Izzy has to train three or four times a week for her role in SARDA (Image: Ian Cooper/Daily Post)

“We can also get called out elsewhere if something big happens such as the April Jones search, we had dogs go down for that.”

The 24-hour lifesaver added: “SARDA takes over your life, it really does, especially when you’ve got a young dog and you’re training three or four times a week every week, plus you’re spending a weekend away every month in Snowdonia.

“Then you spend the next two to three years training your dog and hopefully at the end of that you qualify your dog.

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“Then you go out on call-outs and to actually have a find is an amazing feeling to know that your dog has actually saved someone’s life.

“We are a charity, we rely on donations completely to fund our training and there’s been quite a few people who are so grateful that they’ve given us donations and got in contact that way.

“We don’t always hear back and we don’t always have a good outcome, but sometimes family then get in touch as well because they are grateful that they can have cloure on what’s happened to their loved ones,

“We do find out and it’s nice to know what happened in the end as well.”